


The Sheltering Sky

by notallwindows



Series: mortem est: bunny's demise [1]
Category: Secret History - Donna Tartt
Genre: Bunny's death re-imagined: what if he were still alive at the bottom of the ravine, Character Death, Gen, Murder, Non-Graphic Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-18
Updated: 2019-05-18
Packaged: 2020-03-07 13:01:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18873703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notallwindows/pseuds/notallwindows
Summary: "Hello Bunny," Henry said conversationally, as if he didn't just try to kill him. "I am so glad that you are alive."





	The Sheltering Sky

**Author's Note:**

> Boy, this is macabre. The rating is for slight descriptions of murder and suffocation, and some blood.

"Is he dead?" 

Francis was the one who finally breaks the silence, asking what we were all wondering. The body in the ravine is still, dark blood gushing from where its head had struck a rock. 

Henry, who had been leaning impassively forward, straightened up from the ledge. He shot Francis an impatient look.

"Well, is he?"

Francis' voice took on a shrillness, which must have moved Henry. Henry pinched his forehead. 

"It is hardly necessary to go down all the way to check," he said, glancing at me. "Bunny fell a good hundred feet or so, by any estimate, he must be dead-"

I was unsure of this myself. Bunny's body had fallen so fast- in the flash of an eye, he had hit the bottom. Later, in my own time, I would calculate that his body had likely been travelling at more than thirty-two feet per second, given the variables. Had I known this, I surely would have given the verdict that Bunny was dead as a doornail, that we needn't waste our time, and we would have left without a fuss. It is miraculous to think- even now, that Bunny could have survived that fall, could be conscious and bleeding out and scared of all hell at the bottom of that ravine. 

"I can't say for sure," I said, reluctantly. 

Henry's brows tightened, and he gave a slight harrumph. 

"Well, then we had better check, hadn't we?"

Mouth tight, Henry turned without another word, and began to make his way down to the bottom of the ravine. 

Charles turned to me, bewildered. 

_Should we go after him?_

I looked back at him, equally shocked by Henry's stalking off. 

"Someone should follow Henry and see what he's up to," Francis said, nervously. 

Camilla began to speak, but I cut her off. 

"I'll go," I said. 

I set off after the path that Henry had gone. My heart was racing, and I could not stop thinking of what I would see at the bottom, when I saw Bunny up close. The cadavers I had dissected for a while in medical school were so impersonal, and I wondered if I would feel the same when I saw Bunny’s dead eyes.

After a slight trek, I made it to the bottom of the pool, where I saw Henry standing a good distance away, next to the corpse. Bunny was faintly spluttering, his forehead shimmering red and a thin stream of blood leaking slowly out the corner of his mouth. I cannot tell you what I felt: relief, that he was alive, and dread, that we would now have to kill him now, again. 

I pulled up my trousers, and waded into the icy cool of the pool, instantly regretting not removing my shoes. Henry hadn't noticed me yet. He was crouching next to Bunny, his hand on Bunny's neck. I thought he was taking his pulse; it looked like he was, from a distance, but I realised that he was holding Bunny's neck up in a weird sort of cradling grasp so that he could look into his eyes. 

"Hello Bunny," Henry said conversationally, as if he didn't just try to kill him. "I am so glad that you are alive."

Henry's eyes were shining through his pince-nez. I thought perhaps the light was catching on his lenses: surely he couldn't actually be pleased that Bunny was alive. But he looked immensely overjoyed: there was a wild glint to his eyes, and I was reminded of a passage in the Iliad describing Achilles’ bloodlust. I felt sick.

Bunny coughed, his chest heaving weakly as he struggled to curse at Henry. His eyes were wide, and when he parted his pale lips I could see that his teeth were coated in a wet bloody sheen. His face was a picture of terror, nothing like the abject calm in Henry's face.

Henry set Bunny's head down on the rock that had gashed it open, with an almost farcical reverence. He removed his glasses and wiped at them with his sleeves with an unhurried gaze. 

 _Henry what are you doing_ , I thought wildly from where I was standing with my feet in the water, oh my god Henry you’re _getting blood on your pince-nez._  

Bunny's mouth gasped open soundlessly as he winced in pain, his mouth forming syllables too soft and contorted to make out. Henry leaned his face towards Bunny, as if to hear better.  

I thought to reveal myself to Henry: he had not noticed me standing mutely, just a few feet away. But the moment between him and Bunny felt so intimate, so primal, that I felt like a voyeur peering through a darkened keyhole, even though they were both in the broad daylight. I glanced up, and saw Camilla whispering to Charles as Francis sat in a corner a distance away, his eyes covered. Charles caught my eyes, and gestured furiously at me. 

_Tell him to hurry the hell up!_

Bunny said something to Henry, but I was too far away to hear. A slight, humourless laugh from Henry. Henry picked his head up in his odd cradling position again- Bunny was too weak to resist- and what he said next I will never forget. 

The other events of the murder have passed through my mind so many times that like a movie, sometimes, a frame or two skips: I can no longer remember clearly, for example, if Francis was wearing his watch on that day, or if it was Charles or Henry who suggested later on that day that the snow portended trouble. I remember Henry's face as he delivered the verdict to a dying man, the ascetical calm of a man who has achieved divinity as he meted out the sentence: _Now_ _you_ _can_ _die_ _again_. 

 _Now_ _you_ _can_ _die_ _again_! What a thing to say to a dying man immobilised in your arms! I wonder how Bunny felt as he stared into Henry's eyes, to see nothing but inky darkness. Not a single human emotion, no clemency nor kindness. There are nights, even now, when I dream that I am Bunny, lying on my back helplessly in the ravine. Henry's hand on my throat, his grip tightening like a vice slowly, as his face leans down towards mine. 

From the top of the ravine, it must have seemed like Henry was taking a dying Bunny's pulse, over and over. It must have seemed like a lioness toying with her food, how arduous and drawn-out the whole process was. Why couldn't Henry just kill Bunny straight away? Why did he have to be cruel? Bunny was terrified in his final moments. I know this: I saw him, and when he was found ten weeks later his face, with his mouth frozen forever in a gasping “O” that was described as "nightmare-inducing" in the Vermont Times. Neither Charles nor Camilla saw the imperceptible tightening of Henry's grip, or saw Bunny's eyes go cross. To be fair, Henry didn't have to do very much: Bunny, when we found him, was not dead but well on his way there. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth when I realised later on, that I could have spared him the horror of his death if I had not suggested checking the body. He would have died anyway.

At the last moment, Bunny seemed to notice me, standing stiff as a status a distance away from Henry. His eyes met mine, and I felt my own panic reflected back at me. He reached his hand towards me infinitesimally, trembling for a moment before it fell flatly into the water. In my delirium, I noticed that the tip of his fingernails were torn. 

That splash, that _dead_ splash, slight as it is, seemed in my mind more momentous than the first, when a hundred-and-fifty-pound body fell into the water. 

It is a moment of weakness, I suppose, but I sometimes wonder if I could have saved him in those last moments, when he reached out to me. If I could have rushed to his side, slapping away Henry's hand. If I could still get Bunny to a hospital. And then what? I inevitably draw a blank every time. I have to stop myself. There is no use thinking like that, not when we had gone ahead with the plan in the first place. It is pure hypocrisy, for Bunny's outreached hand to have moved me as much as it did, when his animate figure at the top of the ravine did nothing to my bowels. 

Henry straightened up, letting go of Bunny's head, which lolled at a broken angle. For the first time, he seemed to notice me.

"Oh, hello, Richard," he said steadily. The only sign of exertion on him was the slight sheen of sweat on his forehead. "You look terribly pale." 

Henry was the very image of wellness: he looked as scholarly and poised as usual. The only thing off was a clump of faint rust-red fingerprints on his glasses. Next to him, I felt even more unnerved than I already was. For a moment, I was afraid he was going to turn on me.

Henry turned to look at the body one last time. 

"Let's go up to the others, shall we?"

He examined his hands, bending down to rinse them slightly in the water. I watched as Bunny's blood ran off his hands and dissolved into nothing. "I must thank you for your suggestion. It was the correct one, to be thorough in finishing the job." 

He didn't acknowledge anything that had happened. And in a sense, I suppose he didn't need to. We had all killed Bunny when we watched Henry give that fatal push. It was inconsequential that he hadn't died then. It made no difference if he had died from the fall, or if Henry had had to kill him with his own hands. 

Above us, Charles was gesturing frantically at us, stopping short of yelling our names. Henry and I left the ravine with our shoes wet after checking that we had left nothing behind, nothing but what had happened. I never told anyone about Henry’s cruelty, nor did I think too much about it. I suspect that I may have told Francis about it once when we were dead drunk in the middle of the night, but when we woke up again the truth had evaporated like the last dregs of whiskey in the shot glass. Henry’s dead now, and I’m still the only one who knows what happened that day down in the ravine. 

"Why were you holding Bunny for so long  out there in the open?" Charles hissed at us as we got on the car, me between the twins. Henry was wiping his hands on the kerchief, leaving behind clean wet spots. Those spots seemed to be faintly tinted red in my imagination. 

"Just wanted to be sure he was dead," Henry said calmly, as he started the car. Francis was next to him, staring miserably ahead. 

-END-

**Author's Note:**

> After writing this I was like... love how Camilla has no character or presence whatsoever... very Donna Tartt of me to do so, even if I do say so myself. A take inspired by [this scene from rpdr s4](https://iambi-c.tumblr.com/post/184966273746/if-bunny-had-landed-at-the-bottom-of-the) that ended up being more dark than I intended.
> 
> Please comment and leave feedback! :)


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